


After the storm

by izfairy



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:43:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izfairy/pseuds/izfairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after mockingjay (the final hunger games book),  but before the epilogue. Kat isn't ready to choose, and won't let Peeta or Gale choose for her, she chooses independence for now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the storm

The Mockingjay bow stays in my wardrobe. I know what you’re thinking: why not use it, sell it, even burn it? I thought of doing all of those things, but nothing felt right. Getting rid of the bow wouldn’t erase what I’ve done; it wouldn’t bring back the people that bow has killed. It wouldn’t let me forget. And why should it? They deserve to be remembered.

The bow was never meant for me: it was for the person Coin thought Panem wanted me to be. I won’t be that person anymore, and yet I know I can never be the person I was. No-one can help me find that person; to do so would be to pretend that none of this had happened. To make all those lives, even my own life, insignificant.

For the first time since the reaping, I’m not a part in anyone’s game. And for the first time since Dad died, I’m not living my life for someone else. So what am I living for? That question took longer to answer.

First, I needed a new bow. The design was easy: I knew my old bow inside out; years I’d held it, felt it, hunted as one with it. Getting the wood to obey was more difficult. Days turned to weeks as I whittled away, desperate to recreate the images in my head. It bought me time. Time to work out what I believed, and what I wanted.

In the end, she’ll choose who she can’t survive without.  
Well here I am, surviving. Gale went to 2. So what? He doesn’t make my decisions for me. At first I was angry, until I realised: I’m sick of being angry. I’m not asking for happily ever after, I’m just asking for the freedom my friends traded their lives for.

Sometimes I wonder why he did it. I picture him and Peeta playing rock paper scissors for the pleasure of me in 12. Truth is there was no big fight over me; they both have their own agendas now. In district 2, Gale puts that brilliant brain of his to use. The need for weaponry much reduced now that the districts are united, 2 puts what it knows to use making trains and other vehicles, working closely with 3. He volunteers in the schools there too; making sure no one forgets the value of our freedom.

I had to learn to hunt on my own again. My body took some persuading; conditioning my lungs and muscles back into compliance. The wildlife remembered me, not like the easy pickings of 13. No-one was depending on my bounty, but still, I had a reputation to uphold. By the end of my first week Greasy Sae had meat for her stew, and a few of the trees in the forest had less leaves; product of my frustrations. I know they’re not really there, the hallucinations: the people who appear at the tip of my arrow when I shoot. At least, afterwards I do. But once they were. I remind myself of the gains their sacrifices bought, but it doesn’t come easy: I can’t justify every death.

I don’t know much about the person I want to be now, but I know they’re an archer. The good memories are still there, and I can’t let the bad ones crush them. Dad giving me my first bow, patiently teaching me how to use it. Me watching him hunt, taking in all the subtleties of his movement, replaying them over and over until we could move in synch. The first animal I caught – it was a rabbit, and it never saw me coming. The smiles on the faces that didn’t go hungry because of me. I hold those images in my head, draw them up when a hallucination rears its head.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments welcome :)


End file.
